


Most Unexpected

by Melandra



Category: Marlows - Antonia Forest
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 09:39:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/620711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melandra/pseuds/Melandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nicola gets home early...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Most Unexpected

Suitcase swinging jauntily, Nicola strode up the hill towards Trennels. Things were definitely looking up. All years below Upper Fifth had been given an extra day’s holiday. The spring sun was shining, the Easter holidays were just beginning, Miranda was coming to stay in a couple of weeks, and best of all, Giles was already at home. And then there was Patrick. He’d spent the term at home, studying for re-sits in maths between hawking with Regina and hacking around the countryside on Blackleg. His letters, frequent and chatty, had hinted that he was looking forward to her return. Although she hadn’t heard from him for nearly a fortnight… Ignoring the moans and groans from Lawrie, trailing along behind, she quickened her pace. 

The house looked welcoming and infinitely familiar, as if something deep inside her, linking all those generations of Marlows to Trennels, was calling out. Strange to think how she’d resented moving away from London. Now, although part of her still yearned for the city, she was home. She turned the door-handle, and for the first time did not immediately call out for her mother, reveling for once in the quiet. Let Lawrie yell when she finally reached the house…  
The library door was slightly ajar. Thinking that her mother would be there, writing letters or reading, she pushed it further and stepped inside.

Had anyone asked her later, she would have said that her heart actually stopped. Standing in front of the fire, two figures stood entwined.

Her first thought was ‘Alexander and Hephaistion’. For, after ‘The Mask of Apollo’, she had reached ‘Fire from Heaven’, and her brother Giles, always her definition of handsome, and Patrick – Patrick ! – seemed to be re-enacting the scenes she had read with so much secret delight in their attic bedroom. But after that first, split-second, moment of joy at seeing the two boys embracing, as she had tried and failed to picture, a number of thoughts hit her in close succession. That Giles, her shining, handsome brother, was gay. Which made sense, really, and explained a few derisory comments made through the years, everything slotting into place like those final pieces of a jigsaw. But that he should have chosen Patrick …  
She dropped her suitcase like a brick, and the two figures fell apart. She looked from one to the other, and tried to hide the wobble in her voice. “It seems as if that Merrick boy is rather a family failing…” she managed to say, before turning and fleeing.  
And one phrase ran round her mind as she headed up the stairs. All she could think was ‘Oh no – not again…’

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted on Trennels


End file.
